


futures and pasts

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Isaac reminds Peter of the past, M/M, and Peter likes that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 17:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/916264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isaac is the opposite of Peter’s wife.  Isaac is young, so young, and he’s pale, quiet, with bright blue eyes and a gaunt face.  Isaac is full of sadness and he needs saving from everyone and himself.  He drinks his coffee black and likes to curl into small spaces until all that’s visible is a head full of curls and a pair of broad shoulders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	futures and pasts

**Author's Note:**

> peter is so ooc in this that it physically pains me to re-read it, but oH WELL. i seem to have a fascination with comparing current characters to the dead relatives of other characters, so. okay. disregards canon to such an extent that jeff davis would be proud of me.

Peter is sixteen when he meets his wife. She’s older, twenty four at the time, with dark skin, darker eyes, and an even darker sense of humour. She’s a witch, and the Hales hate her on sight.

They make it work, though, meeting in cheap motels, the woods on the other side of town, a diner that serves steak as rare as Peter wants it; when he hits twenty and they’re still going strong, Talia realises her mistake, and the love of Peter’s life is welcomed into the pack, albeit hesitantly.

She’s optimistic and loud and she saves his life at least once a week, counteracting his impulsiveness with a calm intensity he hasn’t seen since. She wears combat boots and her nose is pierced, and sometimes she’ll fiddle absentmindedly with the little ring of metal as she drinks her tea (Peter hates tea, but he’ll always make it for her).

They watch movies together (he likes Jarmusch and she likes Tarantino), run around the woods in the middle of the night and stare up at the stars, get to the front of the crowd at Sonic Youth gigs and revel in all that noise and distortion and sheer insanity. She teaches him how to cook with herbs and spices and obscure ingredients he didn’t know existed. He teaches her how to fight.

His wolf likes to mark her, scent her, and she’ll do the same in return (at least until he begins to heal), but Peter himself, Peter the boy, is content with tangling his hands in her hair, curling around her until they become one.

When she dies and the fire takes their child with her, Peter cries, at least on the inside, because his outside is incapable. His other half is gone. He isn’t Peter anymore.

Isaac is the opposite of Peter’s wife. Isaac is young, so young, and he’s pale, quiet, with bright blue eyes and a gaunt face. Isaac is full of sadness and he needs saving from everyone and himself. He drinks his coffee black (“black as midnight on a moonless night,” he says one day), and likes to curl into small spaces until all that’s visible is a head full of curls and a pair of broad shoulders.

Isaac and Peter don’t do anything together, other than fight the enemy. They live in a time of turmoil that doesn’t allow for movies or cooking or watching the stars together in the middle of the night (and Sonic Youth just aren’t the same anymore, Peter thinks).

And anyway, Peter isn’t the sneaky little sixteen year old he used to be.

No, Derek’s probably told the pack that Peter is the _enemy_.

The first time he talks to Isaac (properly, about things other than resurrection and vengeance and attack strategy), they’ve known each other for more than half a year, which Peter thinks is ridiculous. The boy is scrunched up in the corner of a second-hand sofa, a two-seater that still has room for two people. He’s reading what looks vaguely like ‘High Fidelity’ and has his earphones stuffed in so tight Peter is surprised he hasn’t caused permanent (well, temporary) damage, and really, what’s the point when he can hear the tinny sounds of The Clash from the kitchen, where he’s _trying_ to make a goddamn roast dinner.

It’s a song he and his wife used to listen to, ‘Spanish Bombs’, but he sits down anyway, pulls the wires out of Isaac’s ears so hard that the kid’s eyes flash yellow, just for a second, and grins, resting his feet on the coffee table with ease.

“You know, it’s bad enough that I have to do _all_ of the work in this house by myself, but your _distractions_ ,” here, he shakes the iPod in front of Isaac’s widening eyes, “aren’t making things any easier.” Peter realises afterwards that he sounds just a tiny bit like a mother at the end of her tether, but Isaac seems sufficiently intimated so he doesn’t let his thoughts linger.

“I – I can help, if you want. With the food.”

Peter beams. Intended result achieved.

They cook for what seems like hours (really it’s about thirty minutes), and it reminds Peter of his youth, though the roles have been reversed and he has been promoted to teacher rather than student. Isaac flits around, taking care of his assigned tasks with hands that shake and feet that bounce, but his work is always perfect. Peter sticks an old mix tape on, one that he made in his teens, and he sees Isaac smile out of the corner of his eye, and he feels young again, herbs and spices in hand, Sonic Youth on the radio, another person’s body heat in the vicinity. It’s nice. It’s the nicest thing he’s felt in years.

(Of course, it would have to be Isaac. Isaac hadn’t witnessed Peter’s actions first-hand, hadn’t watched his destruction, his vengeance, his manipulation and murder, unfold. [Peter wasn’t ashamed of these things, but it was nice to have a clean slate for once]).

They finish dinner and eat as a pack, still tense, still Peter at one end of the table and everyone else at the other, but Isaac feels closer than usual.

Three weeks later he talks to Isaac again, though this time under much more unfortunate circumstances. His claws are in the boy’s neck and the images are swimming, swimming, and he can see movement, see people, but everything is clouded by this overwhelming feeling of hurt, as though all of Isaac’s memories are shrouded with pain, and it’s so horrific, so much like his own mind, that he has to drag his hand away, and as soon as he does, his head is foggy and he can hardly hear what Derek is saying, let alone formulate a normal response.

Isaac, for his part, seems relatively okay with the whole thing, even after he’s submerged in an ice bath and brought to the precipice between life and death just a few hours later. Peter thinks it’s kind of sad that the boy will go through so much for an alpha who treats him like shit most of the time.

Thing is, Peter finds it difficult to care about _new_ people. He’s not himself, anymore, more a cold, empty version of himself, and so Boyd, Erica, Stiles – they’re all tiny little blips on his radar of self-preservation.

But Isaac, despite all of his striking opposites, reminds him of the past, even though it’s coffee he smells of rather than tea, pale and thin instead of dark and strong. Peter thinks it might be the wolf in him, drawn instinctually to certain people, but Isaac feels like his youth and the full moon and the first woman he ever cared for.

And it scares him, so he disappears for weeks, virtually omega, knowing that the pack doesn’t care for him enough to send out a search party of sorts.

Except Isaac shows up halfway through his self-enforced exile and plops down wordlessly into a chair in the corner of his room, legs tucked up underneath him, ‘High Fidelity’ in hand (Jesus it takes the kid a while to get through a book). It shocks Peter to such an extent that he’s rendered speechless for a good minute, before he manages to force out in a relatively unsurprised tone, “What are you doing?”

The boy looks up, eyes big, and says, as though this is the most obvious answer in the world, “You smelt like pain.” And then he picks the book back up and continues reading, heartbeat steady, like he hasn’t said a thing. There’s a part of Peter that is merely irritated by the fact that the rest of the pack knows he is hurting, but it is overruled by the part that is, well, _flattered_ by Isaac’s decision to come and soothe his pain, even if his technique needs a little work.

“You didn’t think maybe I needed a little ‘alone’ time?” he asks with a smirk, instead.

Isaac shrugs. “You’re pack,” he says without further explanation, not even looking up from his book. Peter rolls his eyes and removes his jacket, deciding to leave it at that. He doesn’t want Isaac to _leave_ after all, because the boy’s presence is warm and soothing and nice, and Isaac’s right, he does smell like pain. So he climbs into the bed fully-clothed, turns off the light because he knows Isaac can read without it, and goes to sleep.

… Only to wake up with a warm, shirtless body wrapped around his, and Peter sighs, knows it’s Isaac almost immediately because he still smells like the coffee he undoubtedly drank just before he got into bed (because Isaac _does_ things like that), ignores the fact that Isaac is young and vulnerable and easily manipulated because, well, Isaac’s warm, and simply turns over to shove his face into the boy’s neck, drinking in the smell and the taste and the _feel_.

Isaac doesn’t wake, or at least pretends not to, just makes a quiet noise indeterminable even to werewolf ears and tightens his grip on Peter’s hip. It’s nice, and it feels like the past.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from a song by the fall, though the only thing i listened to while writing this was candle by sonic youth.


End file.
